Matters Catholic, Including the Sex Abuse Scandal: Recent Commentary

On matters Catholic, and on the ongoing sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church in particular, several good articles in the last day or so:

At National Catholic Reporter, Maureen Fiedler comments on an interview NCR editor Tom Roberts has done for the "Interfaith Voices" initiative of Interfaith Radio.  Roberts is dealing with the recent John Jay study that seeks to blame the 1960s (and not the bishops) for the abuse crisis.  As Fiedler notes (citing Roberts), the study is questionable prima facie, since its data were all supplied by the very people ostensibly being studied--the bishops, who remain the driving force behind the abuse crisis, and the only solution to it in a church that places all institutional power in their hands, and provides no institutional power at all to the laity.

Fiedler writes:  

As Tom points out, the entire study is severely hampered by the fact that it had only the data supplied by the Catholic bishops and their chancery offices. And then, it had data only from cases that were certifiable as sex abuse, not questionable cases.

And in the Kansas City Star, Mike Hunter and David Clohessy comment on the story of Bishop Robert Finn and Father Shawn Ratigan in the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocese, and how Finn's response to recent revelations of his shocking pastoral malfeasance in this case is likely to produce no productive changes at all in his or any other diocese, when it comes to addressing the abuse crisis.  Hunter and Clohessy predict that Finn will issue yet another insincere, misleading apology, will call in a carefully selected (and almost certainly Catholic) outside reviewer who will produce a report with a few hand-slaps and a few image-management recommendations that won't be implemented, will scapegoat an underling if media attention continues to focus on him (Julie Hess, the whistle-blowing principal who wrote the diocese about Ratigan a year ago is a possible scapegoat because she's a woman, or the diocesan vicar Father Murphy, since he's a subordinate), etc.

And nothing will change.  Because the system is set up to thwart change.  All power is in the hands of the bishops, and there are no penalties at all when they protect abusers, endanger children, and lie to the public after they've been found out.  

Hunter and Clohessy comment on this point: 

What then is the real problem? It’s an inherently unaccountable power structure in the church, an ancient, rigid, secretive, all-male monarchy headed by a bishop who basically answers to no one. Theoretically, of course, bishops answer to the Vatican. But there are some 4,400 bishops across the globe. When was the last time you heard about one of them being disciplined by the Pope? It almost never happens.

There are no “checks and balances” on a bishop’s power. So Finn can make all the pledges he wants regarding child safety. But he could then violate those pledges whenever he particularly likes or needs a troubled priest, or dislikes an accuser or whistle-blower. And he might not suffer any real consequences for such wrongdoing.

Finn’s “changes” likely won’t work because they aren’t “changes” in the real sense of the word. They are public relations maneuvers. They are “tweaks” of a vague, weak, unenforced and unenforcible policy which was also largely created, years ago, by PR folks and defense lawyers for the same reasons and under the same pressure for the same scandal, in an earlier iteration.

And so where can Catholics find any hope for substantial, constructive change?  Hunter and Clohessy think it lies with the criminal justice system:

That’s why we’re desperately hoping police and prosecutors will step up. While our justice system isn’t perfect, it can often unearth the truth in such situations and punish the guilty, thus deterring recklessness, callousness and deceit in the future.

And they're right.  When appeals to pastoral responsibility or moral integrity fail to move ruthless autocrats whose power is unchecked, and who count on doing their dirty work in secret without public scrutiny and with no accountability to the public, all that is left is criminal prosecution.  Endangering innocent children is a crime, and it should be treated as a crime, no matter who is engaged in this behavior.

Finally, a thought-provoking look in NCR at the deeply divided Australian Catholic church by Chris McGillion, who teaches at Charles Stuart University.  McGillion sees "contradictory approaches to being faithful" at the heart of the divisions in the Australian church.  For the top leaders of the church, including Cardinal Pell of Sydney, it's all about "institutional integrity" (obedience, orthodoxy, and conformity).  For large numbers of lay Catholics (and many priests), it's about moral integrity (what the church should be doing for whom and how).

The result of the clash between these two mentalities: the growing disaffection of a huge sector of Australian Catholics, including younger Catholics, in particular.  By 2006, regular Mass attendance was at 14% and falling, with the numbers bolstered primarily by first-generation immigrant Catholics.  Though, as with Benedict's visit to Britain last year, apologists for the John Paul-Benedict model of church have engaged in overblown rhetoric about how the large numbers turning out for expensive papal shows indicate vibrant faith in Australia, the real numbers--the numbers of those continuing to go to church regularly, for instance--indicate precisely the opposite.

And so what's going to happen in yet another national church of the developed sector of the world in which Catholic religious adherence is tanking under the leadership of a pope and bishops in whose hands all authority resides, and who insist, along with their apologists--despite abundant empirical evidence to the contrary--that their "reform of the reform" is working and reviving the church?  McGullion doesn't see much hope.  As he notes, what we're witnessing is the failure of an antiquated model of church that is deliberately stifling the growth of the new, reformed model of Vatican II--as with the recent sacking of Australian bishop William Morris, after he called for dialogue about women's ordination.

And institutions that want to remain alive don't kill what's new and what promises hope.

The graphic shows the highest ranking Australian Catholic cleric at present, Cardinal Pell, modeling the new, vibrant, reform-of-the-reform church.

Petition to Pope Benedict about Unjust Firing of Bishop William Morris

Through the lay Catholic reform group Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), I've just gotten word of a petition drive being organized by the group Just Church to object to the unjust treatment of Australian bishop William Morris.  As I noted in several postings some days ago (and here, here, and here), Morris was removed from his position as bishop of Toowoomba the day following the beatification of John Paul II.

Pope Benedict removed Bishop Morris from office, and this petition is directed to the pope.  If you feel inclined to sign (and I recommend signing), the petition is here.  The petition site also has instructions about how you can share this document with others.

Recent Commentary on the Firing of Australian Bishop Morris: Support of His Priests, Smear Campaign by Chaput's Catholic News Agency

More commentary on the sacking of Australian bishop William M. Morris by Pope Benedict (and see also here):

At America magazine's "In All Things" blog today, Fr. James Martin posts a response to Morris's firing by Australian Jesuit Frank Brennan, a well-known advocate for justice for his nation's aboriginal people.  And here's the section of Brennan's reflection that stands out for me: 

After Chaput’s visit, all but three priests of the diocese wrote to Rome in support of Morris’s pastoral leadership.  So too did all the Pastoral Leaders and all members of the Diocesan Pastoral Council. 

Pope Benedict chose to move against Bishop Morris despite the pleas of the large majority of priests serving under Morris's pastoral leadership, and despite every member of the Diocesan Pastoral Council in this diocese.  As with the liturgical "reforms" now being imposed by Rome on the entire church, what Benedict is choosing to do in the case of this Australian bishop flatly ignores the wishes of the majority of priests, pastoral ministers, and lay leaders of the diocese in question.

Benedict's style of pastoral leadership is not merely authoritarian: it also deliberately chooses to send signals to the people of God that the views and desires of the people of God simply count for nothing, when the pope chooses to rule.  This is naked authoritarianism that has destructive effects on local churches, because it imposes the will of the center on local churches that are much better equipped to discern the pastoral needs of their local area, and to discern who is or is not a good pastoral leader for their local community.

This style of leadership is akin to the disastrous parenting style of parents whose only claim to have authority over their children is the bald assertion of parental authority.  It is devoid of recourse to reason, pastoral sensitivity, dialogue: it is all about maintaining the power of the person on top without any regard for the person receiving peremptory orders from the top.

And, unfortunately, due to the lacuna in good catechesis in the John Paul II generation, about which I blogged several days ago, younger Catholics catechized in the era of John Paul II have such deficient knowledge of the history of the church that they are unaware of how significantly this top-down, authoritarian style that rides roughshod over the rights of bishops and their prerogatives as pastors of local churches departs from longstanding Catholic tradition.

As Brennan also points out, Morris was deposed by Benedict on the basis of a secret report compiled by American archbishop Charles J. Chaput, which Morris has never seen, and whose contents have never been shared with Morris.  And that being the case, I'm very interested to read the following headline about the Morris case in the national Catholic newspaper based in Chaput's Denver diocese, Catholic News Agency: "As Controversy Continues, 'Grave Reasons' Seen in Deposing Australian Bishop."

But here's the thing: no one knows those "grave reasons" except Chaput and the Pope, ostensibly.  And so one wonders how Fr. Jesus Miñanbres Fernandez, the canonist of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross whom CNA is citing for this phrase "grave reasons," knows why Bishop Morris was sacked.  Read the article itself, and the only "grave reason" it offers for Benedict's action vs. Bishop Morris is that 2006 pastoral letter to his diocese in which Bishop Morris stated that, given the vocations crisis and how it is affecting his diocese, surely open discussion of women's ordination might be considered.

The CNA report seeks to insinuate that Morris is not being forthcoming about that pastoral letter and has suppressed information about it.  And yet the text of that letter has been widely discussed in the Catholic media (e.g., here, with a link to the original document),  and there is no doubt at all about what Bishop Morris said or didn't say in this mild document calling for dialogue about an issue considered worth discussing by many Catholics around the world.

In my view, since CNA is more or less Chaput's own newspaper, his own official voice (and that's why I often call CNA "the Chaput News Agency" when I link to its articles), it's more than a little sleazy for Chaput's paper to publish an article about Bishop Morris with a misleading--and downright dirty--headline insinuating that there are "grave reasons" for this bishop's firing, when the bishop in question hasn't even been told why he was fired.  Or what Chaput reported to the head honcho in Rome as he chopped off a brother bishop's head.

Chaput should have more integrity than to publish a headline like this.  It is slimy behavior on his part to do so.

Mothers' Day: Catholic Bishops Would Be Better Fathers If They Acted Like Good Mothers

As Mothers' Day arrives in many parts of the world, I'm thinking back to the following posting that I wrote in May 2009. It still seems pertinent to me, with its arguments that the bishops of the Catholic church would be far better bishops if they acted more like good mothers and less like bad fathers.  Here it is (with Mothers' Day wishes to readers):

After I posted yesterday about the inability of the U.S. Catholic bishops to convince either Catholics or society at large about their interpretation of what respect for life entails, my friend and fellow-blogger Colleen Kochivar-Baker left a comment. Colleen notes that my posting dovetailed with what she posted on her Enlightened Catholicism blog the same day.


Colleen’s posting focuses on the homily Pope Benedict gave this past Sunday at a Mass in Jordan. And she is absolutely right: her critique of that homily dovetails in a remarkable way with my analysis of why the U.S. bishops are failing to convince either their co-religionists or the wider public that the Catholic church really means what it teaches about the value of life.

Colleen notes that Benedict’s homily follows a well-trodden path in speaking of male-female complementarity and the “special” vocation of women. As Colleen notes, Benedict has been emphasizing this theme for some time now: in 2004, as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the then Cardinal Ratzinger issued a “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World.”

That document enunciates the same themes Benedict highlighted this past Sunday: e.g., that women have a “particular dignity, vocation and mission” in church and world, a mission centered on “building peace and fostering love.” Benedict speaks of women as “bearers of love, teachers of mercy and artisans of peace, bringing warmth and humanity to a world that all too often judges the value of a person by the cold criteria of usefulness and profit.”

Benedict bases his theory of male-female complementarity in part on the Genesis creation narratives. But as Colleen notes, Benedict’s understanding of those narratives seems not to be informed by sound exegetical research, since

[w]hat Benedict usually leaves out in his references to Genesis is that biblical scholars see the first chapter of Genesis describing the creation of ha adam out of adamah. That is creating an 'earthling' (ha adam), from earth (adamah). There is no gender definition implied in the original Hebrew.

The Hebrew in which the Genesis creation narratives are written implies that God creates humanity first and foremost. The distinction of human being into gender is a secondary moment in the creation process. The calling to be human—fully human—transcends any biological calling to be male or female.

This is not merely a niggling observation about the need for exegetical accuracy as we interpret the bible. It is a profoundly important observation about what being human is all about, in the mind of the author(s) of the Genesis creation narratives. If we are called by these narratives to live our lives according to some divine purpose implanted in us by virtue of creation, that purpose is first and foremost about being a human being—a human being made in God’s image. It is only secondarily (and tangentially) about being a man or a woman.

In elevating the male-female distinction to the level of God’s divine plan for human beings and arguing that these stories lay down separate biologically-grounded roles for men and women, Benedict and many other Christians today are missing the point: they are turning into an idol something in the text that was not meant to have divine status. They are reading biological imperatives as divine commands, which then translate into commands about gender roles for faithful men and women.

There is no gender definition implied in the original Hebrew: Colleen’s analysis of the story is absolutely correct here. There is no gender definition implied, and to the extent that we now read these stories as stories about male-female complementarity (and separate male-female gender roles), we’re misinterpreting them by imposing on them preoccupations that were not part of the worldview of the authors of the text.

And how does this insight dovetail with what I posted yesterday? In yesterday’s posting, I argued that the U.S. Catholic bishops have failed to convince many of us with their ethic of life, because they ground that ethic in paternalistic example and a paternalistic worldview. I argued that to be convincing about life, the bishops would have to do what seems not to come naturally to them these days: they’d have to act maternal for a change.

They’d have to think like mothers. They’d have to think like what they keep insisting the church is to all of us, a mother. They’d have to start wrapping their arms around the world the way God does in the very first image of God we meet in scripture, in those very same Genesis creation stories, which speak of God creating the world by folding matter under her divine wings and brooding over it until it comes to life.

To convince us about life, the men wearing bright robes while brandishing big croziers need to begin acting like good mothers. As I wrote, if the bishops want to be convincing when they talk about life, they need to cultivate the maternal virtues that, as Benedict’s homily last Sunday rightly notes, are central to any profound ethic of life.

They’d need to begin nurturing the young and the weak, healing the sick, tending the earth and making it flourish, creating a safe and welcoming space for others, building a community of homes in which everyone has welcome places throughout the land. They’d need to start doing these things themselves and stop relegating them to some woman somewhere, or any woman anywhere (the paternalistic rhetoric of the magisterium assumes women are objects, generic care-providing things).

That noble-sounding rhetoric of the magisterium re: male-female complementarity and the “particular dignity and vocation” of women is a trap and a cop-out. It’s a trap for women and a cop-out for men. It entraps women because it allows men all over the globe to slough off responsibility to do what women are always expected to do and men need to do: care for the young and the elderly and the weak, cherish the earth and make it flourish, build welcoming homes across the globe, nurse the sick. The paternalistic rhetoric of male-female complementarity is a cop-out for men because it lets men off the hook when such necessary human tasks arise. It allows men to relegate the most significant tasks in the world to some woman somewhere, who is not even respected as she undertakes these tasks, and is regarded as interchangeable with all women in the rhetoric of paternalism.

Benedict's reading of Genesis allows men to be not who they were meant to be—full human beings capable of a wide range of emotions and responsibilities—but less human. Benedict twists Genesis to permit men to become something they were never meant to be, half-human beings with no instinct for care, nurture, tenderness. In being paternal without being maternal, in fulfilling their “God-given” role as real men, men end up being stunted human beings, even as men profess to be the lords and masters of creation under the divine imperative of Genesis.

Human beings who do not aim at being fully developed humans, who combine in their persons and lives male-female tasks, are incapable of effective leadership of communities of care centered on an ethic of respect for life. The bishops cannot and never will obtain buy-in for their life ethic until they begin to show that they themselves take the ethic of life seriously, in all its ramifications. As a start, they could begin to listen, for instance, as mothers listen carefully to their children, to hear the words inside the spoken words, the cries of the speaking heart hidden in the words.

One of the supremely ironic effects of the current papal regime’s call for a purge of gays in the priesthood and in seminaries is that this purge is likely to weed out precisely those men in ministry most competent at modeling the gender-complementarity that should be the goal of any balanced human psyche, and, in particular, of the psyche of any human being in ministry. The church’s current ugly, preposterous attempt to convince us that the only good priest is a manly man—a man modeling a macho, swaggering maleness that demeans women—will eventually starve the priesthood of candidates most gifted for pastoral ministry.

And it will also eventually undermine the church’s teaching about respect for life even more profoundly than it has already been undermined by a generation of bishops who have unthinkingly bought into the rhetoric of gender complementarity with its attendant presuppositions of the male's obligation to dominate and the female's calling to submit. If the bishops ever want to convince us that they really do respect life—all life, from cradle to grave—then they need to drop the act of the domineering papa and the gay-bashing that goes with that act, and act like good mothers for a change.

Joan Chittister on Expulsion from Family and Minority Wisdom: Critical Questions for the John Paul II Era of Catholic Apologetics

When I posted yesterday about the recent NCR editorial re: the story of Bishop Morris in Australia, I had planned to post a follow-up about Joan Chittister's latest NCR essay, "Expulsions from Religious Orders, Family, and Minority Wisdom."  I thought of posting a comment about Chittister's piece because it's, to my mind, a perfect counterpoint to the discussion of what Benedict is doing to Bishop Morris, and of the inexorable, draconian logic of patriarchal hierarchy that underlies the pope's actions in this case.

And then I thought better of saying the same thing twice--and at length--in two postings in one day.  So I've decided to say the same thing twice in two postings on subsequent days.  Today, I want to pay attention to John Chittister's alternative logic, alternative vision for how the church might be structured and how its leaders might behave, as she articulates these in her latest NCR essay.  Alternative to how the men in charge in Rome now want to do things, that is . . . .

Chittister is commenting on the punishment Benedict is dealing out to Fr. Roy Bourgeois for his defense of women's ordination.  Bourgeois' dissent is not in question.  Nor is the right of the institution's leaders to punish him for dissent in question.  As Chittister points out, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhöffer, Franz Jägerstätter, Edith Stein, Dorothy Day: all contravened the prevailing cultural or religious mores of their time and place, and all paid a price.  All challenged institutions and laws governing the societies in which they lived, and all were subject to reprisal by the lawmakers of those societies.

The fact that institutions like the Vatican punish, and have the right to punish, is undeniable in the case of Fr. Bourgeois.  What's up for discussion, however, Chittister notes, is how Pope Benedict is choosing to punish Fr. Bourgeois for supporting women's ordination.  He is choosing not merely to remove his liturgical faculties or limit his priestly functions.  

He's choosing, instead, to decree that Bourgeois's religious community, Maryknoll--his family of the past 40 years--expel him.  Repudiate him.  Treat him as a non-person.  Take away his pension, access to financial support, and the entire network of sustenance that any good family provides any family member.

As I observed yesterday, according to the inexorable, draconian patriarchal logic that governs the hierarchical system of Roman Catholicism, the penalty for refusing to give unquestioning obedience to any and all orders that come down the chain of command from the top is precisely such expulsion: 

In an absolutist hierarchy whose central virtue is unquestioning obedience, no one in the chain of command dares to make decisions independent of the man above him.  He does not dare to give even the suggestion of asking questions or disobeying, because the reprisal is too great.  It is immediate expulsion from the hierarchical system itself.

The kind of punishment being dished out now to Fr. Bourgeois by Pope Benedict is entirely consistent with the logic of the system of governance on whose maintenance Benedict is banking the future of the church.  In fact, a patriarchal hierarchical system of governance grounded in belief that the man on top has every right in the world to issue orders and demand that they be obeyed with implicit and unthinking obedience: this kind of system has no choice except to expel a dissenter from its ranks.

To treat him or her as a non-person.  As someone who no longer exists for the family.  Someone who is dead to the family.

Whereas (and, again, I noted this in what I wrote yesterday), this kind of system does not regard the infractions of those who contravene many other kinds of moral norms with anywhere near the same severity with which it regards the failure to obey.  One can contravene other central moral norms of the institution--even norms forbidding the adult sexual molestation of children--and still find a home within the institution, provided one remains obedient.  Obedient to the man on top, that is.

One can still be a family member if one abuses children or protects the abusers of children, if one remains obedient to the all-powerful father figure who issues the commands from the top of the hierarchical structure.  And so Chittister points out that though Fr. Bourgeois is being savagely expelled from the family in which he has lived and to which he has contributed for 40 years, because he supports the call of women to be ordained,

After all, the Vatican did not expel pedophile priests or abusing bishops from the secular priesthood for violating children. In some cases, in fact, they protected the perpetrators repeatedly and even refused to defrock them -- civil law or no civil law. And are, apparently, doing it even now. Only behavior related to women’s issues, it seems, qualifies for expulsion.

And for many Catholics and many morally sensitive observers of things Catholic, this is where the severe cognitive dissonance I noted yesterday enters the picture.  By the choices Benedict is making as pope, by his behavior and the priorities for our church to which his behavior points, by the insistence on beatifying John Paul II post-haste: we're being asked to believe that a Catholic leader who has sexually molested a minor or protected a priest who has molested a minor is a better moral exemplar than one who has dared to call for open discussion of the question of women's ordination.

We're being asked by our current religious leader to rank a Cardinal Law or Rigali or an Archbishop Chaput or a John Paul II as higher on the moral scale, more significant in the moral scheme of things, than a Fr. Roy Bourgois.  Or a Sr. Elizabeth Johnson.  Or a Bishop William Morris.

And to many of us, something seems radically awry in the moral calibration on which this picture depends.  Something seems very wrong with this picture--and with the institutional logic (driven by patriarchial presuppositions rather than gospel mandates) that paints this picture for us.

As Joan Chittister points out, there are other ways to see things, and other ways to do things, than how Rome now sees and does things.  She points to the Talmudic tradition, in which minority wisdom (i.e., the viewpoints of dissenters) is carefully recorded and preserved.  Preserved because, in the course of historical development, it often happens that the viewpoint of the embattled dissenter turns out to be the one viewpoint that an institution or society sorely needed to preserve its humanity, at a particular point in history.  It turns out that Franz Jägerstätter was right about the meaning of the Nazi period and the Catholic pastoral officials, the successors of the apostles, who urged him to deny his conscience and obey the command of the Fatherland to give Nazi military service were wrong in the moral scheme of things.

Chittister's argument here (and the moral example of Bl. Jägerstätter and countless other similar examples over the course of history) implicitly counter the prevailing logic of those now promoting and defending the restorationist purge mounted by this pope and the previous one in the Catholic church.  I have hesitated to write much about this prevailing logic (which is an apologetic for the patriarchal logic sustaining the hierachical system of Catholicism as it is now arranged) because this logic is, frankly, crude.  It's not worth a great deal of intellectual effort.  It is not intellectually compelling, for anyone with a beyond-parochial knowledge base or outlook on the world.

And yet it is powerfully represented in the contemporary Catholic church and many of its most ardent defenders, particularly among Catholic youth who identify as John Paul II youth, and who have been schooled (and very badly so) in the John Paul II era of catechesis.  This logic goes something like this: we would not have gotten to the point we have reached in the development of Catholic truth, if what we now have is not correct.  If it's not true.  If it doesn't represent God's will for the Catholic church.

Truth wins, after all.  We have  won in history, and those minority positions and the dissenters who have defended them have lost, because our truth is the truth.  And theirs is error.  And not only does their minority error deserve altogether to be expunged from the record, but they themselves, the dissenters, deserve to be expelled from the Catholic family.  Forgotten.  Treated as dead.

To question any facet of what we now have is to question an entire system on which the Catholic church's claim to represent Christ in the world stands.  We cannot and will not change 2,000 years of Catholic truth merely because tired old liberals of the 1960s and the Vatican II era want to dismantle our system of divinely ordained truth.  The longer this truth has played out in our church and in the world, the more certain we are that it is God's truth at work through the Catholic church in the world.  The very fact that it is old--2,000 years old, we maintain--points to its legitimacy as divine truth.

There's so much wrong with this set of crude presuppositions, with this crude apologetic of the John Paul II generation in the Catholic church, that I hardly know where to begin to discuss what's wrong.  Or how to begin countering claims and presuppositions so laughably devoid of any historical basis or elementary logic that they hardly merit intellectual effort.

If one did want to stoop to an intellectual response to such a non-intellectual grab bag of ill-conceived notions about the Catholic church, what it teaches, what it has done over the course of history, here are some of the obvious points I think one might make in response to the prevailing logic of the new generation of apologists for Catholic truth, with their crude, defiant insistence that their truth has won and is validated as the truth simply because it has stamped out dissenting opinions (along with one brother and sister Catholic after another, ho happens to hold those opinions):

Those 2,000 year-old "truths" being defended by the John Paul II generation of apologists are not by any means what the church has held and taught forever.  The primary way in which those "truths" reach the current generation of younger Catholic is through the catechism.

Jesus would not recognize the catechism.  He would be mystified by what he would read in the catechism--by its enumeration of "truths" he supposedly delivered to the church as the deposit of faith to be safeguarded by the successors of the apostles generation after generation in the church.  The catechism would make no sense to him, as a devout Jew.  The notion of truth on which it depends--the notion that divine truth can be bundled up into little syllogistic package-statements and delivered as a "deposit" to be parroted and ardently defended by generation upon generation of faithful Catholics: that notion is worlds removed from the Jewish notion of religious truth with which Jesus's thinking was imbued.

The idea that someone walking into any Catholic church in the world today, and participating in its liturgical worship, is somehow doing and acting as followers of Jesus did and acted in the New Testament period is laughable.  The notion that any liturgical forms or ecclesial gewgaws venerated by Catholics today faithfully replicate the practice of New Testament Christians, who met in house churches for eucharistic celebrations that occurred in the context of meals, is so historically naive as to be absurd.

The belief that what the church says in its current catechism is what it has always taught, for 2,000 years, and that church teaching has not changed (over and over and over again) is equally absurd for anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of history.  What the church has taught and how those teachings have been formulated over the course of 2,000 years of complex history have changed repeatedly.  Change is, in fact, one of the most elementary truths of the church from its foundational period, from the time in which Paul corrected Peter when Peter argued that the community could not change, could not discard the Jewish mold in which the church was born, in its interaction with Gentile culture.

The church is commanded to change and has been commanded to change from its very inception, since it is commanded to go into all cultures and proclaim the gospel to every culture in the world.  That mission makes no sense if the church cannot constantly reframe how it sees and does things, in ever-shifting cultural contexts.

The belief that "the bishops may be bastards, but they're our bastards"; that the church is incapable of cruelty and had no role in the Inquisition or in promoting holy wars, etc.; that priests, bishops, and religious cannot be and have not been capable of extreme cruelty at many points in history; that the church clings to solid, unchanging truth while the state is constantly knocking about to find truth and is the real source of error and cruelty in the world: all these childish beliefs make sense only if Catholics choose to ignore reams and reams of easily accessed historical information available to any half-educated person with a desire to learn today.

Younger Catholics, Catholics miseducated in the John Paul II era of Catholic truth, pay a higher and higher intellectual and moral price for their refusal to engage the obvious and intellectually compelling critical arguments of many of their co-religionists and the culture at large today.  That price is the price of negotiating the cognitive dissonance created by, say, the expulsion of Fr. Bourgeois from a religious community for supporting women's ordination, while Cardinal Law, who protected one serial pedophile after another, lives in "spendorous surroundings" in Rome, in the following way: Catholic truth is the truth, and the bishops are our bishops.  And so any other truth that competes with the official narrative of the church must ipso facto not be truth at all, or must be tarnished truth.  Tarnished like what passes for truth in non-Catholic religious traditions that have departed from the successors of the apostles and have lost access to the deposit of faith in which real and complete truth is locked up.

And so we John Paul II apologists have to cut and paste, clip and patch, in order to ignore the many plain truths coming our way every day from the media, the internet, the world around us, the classroom--anywhere--as we cling to the truth taught to us only by the church.  The same truth it has taught to us for 2,000 years.  Which is mediated to us only by the bishops as successors of the apostles.  Who have the keys that lock and unlock the deposit of faith in which these salvific, unchanging truths are stored.

And we will defend that truth at all costs, and those who dispense it to us, no matter how cruel our defense begins to appear to people of good will, including some brother and sister Catholics, because that truth has prevailed.  We've won.  We won when John Paul II was beatified.

And only winners have the truth.  That's what truth is, by definition.  It's what wins in history.  Losers, by definition, have departed from the truth.  And in grinding the faces of the losers in the ground, we Catholic apologists modeling our practice of the faith on Bl. John Paul II's practice are actually doing a holy thing, since we're defending and vindicating the truth on which the salvation of all humanity depends.

This is, in a nutshell, the kind of crude logic I hear the John Paul II generation of Catholic apologists using, as they interact on various blogs these days (including this blog), and in other venues of discussion where the topic of Catholic truth is on the table.  It's embarrassing.  It's naive.  It demands a tremendously dehumanizing intellectual and moral price from those who push these arguments.  It is morally repulsive in its bellicose triumphalistic claim that truth is what wins in history and what loses is ipso facto untruth.

But it also happens to be the position that has "won" in the church, and it's an absolutely perfect fit for the logic of patriarchal hierarchy on which the governance system of the church depends.  And it will therefore not only not disappear now that John Paul II has been beatified, but it will continue to grow within the Catholic church.  It will continue to grow because it's being deliberately massaged from the top/center of the church now.

All things considered, I think Joan Chittister might just be right: a wiser and more humane institution might find other ways to deal with minority opinions.  Opinions which, though vanquished for the nonce, often turn out to have pointed the way to real humanity, while the dominant opinion of an era turns out to have pointed in quite the opposite direction.

The graphic is a photograph of Fr. Roy Bourgeois protesting at the School of the Americas, 1999.

National Catholic Reporter on Firing of Bishop William M. Morris: Pope's Priorities Now Clear

National Catholic Reporter has published an editorial addressing the recent firing of Australian bishop William M. Morris.  As the title of the editorial suggests, if anyone still remains in doubt about Pope Benedict's priorities for his church, she or he need doubt no longer: the priorities are clear after this action.  It's all about extending an "intellectual chill" in the church that goes beyond the excommunication of Fr. Roy Bourgeois for supporting women's ordination or the condemnation of Sr. Elizabeth Johnson's magisterial work on the theology of God.  

It's about suppressing any and all dissent, even the kind of pastoral thinking out loud that Bishop Morris did in the 2006 pastoral letter to his diocese that has resulted in his dismissal.  It's about asserting absolute control over any and all intraeccesial conversations, from the top or center of the church, and assuring that if those conversations don't march lock-step with the top/center, they're squelched.  Squelched along with the hapless brothers and sisters in Christ mounting the conversations because they imagine that the gospels (and Holy Spirit) have inspired them to do so.

A powerful excerpt from this powerful editorial statement:

First, it turns out it’s really not that difficult for the pope to give a bishop a pink slip. In the course of the quarter-century clergy sexual abuse cover-up, there’s been considerable handwringing over just this question. Bishops don’t “work for” the pope, we have been told. Bishops are “fathers” to their flock – with all the unconditional love and commitment that entails – not employees subject to the whims, well-intentioned or otherwise, of the boss. Canonical procedures must be followed.

Apparently, that’s just so much hooey. If the pope and his advisers care deeply about an issue about which a bishop has publicly raised questions – such as women priests and optional celibacy – a way can be found to dismiss that bishop.

And – noteworthy because it goes to some underlying issues – a bishop who acts against church teaching and law related to sexually abusive priests apparently need fear no such reprisal.

Philadelphia Cardinal Justin Rigali, for example, continues a life befitting a prince in splendorous surroundings, even as his flouting of church procedures (and perhaps civil law) resulted in nearly 30 diocesan priests facing administrative suspension and heat from local prosecutors.

And not to forget Cardinal Bernard Law, orchestrator of the Boston clergy abuse cover-up. His punishment?  An extended Roman holiday and a healthy pension. Meanwhile, Morris gets the door.

The pope’s priorities are clear. 

The context presupposed by the preceding remarks: one of the ploys the Vatican and some dioceses have sought to use to evade moral and legal responsibility for priests sexually abusing minors, who are permitted to remain in ministry after their abuse has become known, is the argument that bishops and priests don’t work for any big boss above them.  They are independent contractors, as it were.  And so those above them in the tightly controlled hierarchical system according to which Catholic governance is structured are not in any way responsible for the actions of those beneath.

As anyone who has given even cursory thought to the behavior of ethically challenged, morality-eliding corporations recognizes, this tactic of shielding the top or center from responsibility is a common evasive tactic of any corporate structure that is a rigidly structured hierarchy.  This evasive technique is a by-product of hierarchy, a predictable response precisely of organizations structured as top-down (or center-to-margins) hierarchies.  

Hierarchical corporate structures place supreme emphasis on the obligation of everyone in the hierarchical chain of command to obey everyone above him.  I use the male pronoun deliberately here, because these tightly controlled hierarchies demanding implicit, absolute obedience down the chain of command are far and away more typical of male-dominated institutions than female ones.  They’re common in institutions that have historically been male-bonded fraternities, like the military, the police, corporate boards, etc.  And the Catholic church. 

In most of those secular institutions, of course, change has been underway throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, and the rigid mechanisms of control are being vigorously challenged, primarily by women seeking full inclusion in the social and economic structures of various societies.  In the Catholic church, however, the structures of absolute control have grown only ever more stolidly authoritarian at this point in history, precisely in response to the claim of many women that they are called by the Spirit to be ordained ministers, and thereby to enter (and, from the viewpoint of the patriarchal system itself, to interrupt) the hierarchical chain of Catholic governance.

The response of the leaders of the Catholic church to that claim of many Catholic women and those in solidarity with women seeking ordination has been to fossilize the structures of control, the hierarchical mechanisms, even more decisively.  It has been to reassert the hierarchical motif within the Catholic system of governance, and, following Bl. John Paul II, whose ultimate response to the question of ordaining women was to decree that he could not change what God had set up within the church even if he wanted to do so, to call that inflexible patriarchal reassertion divine inspiration, an affirmation of what the Catholic church has always believed and practiced, which no pope has the right to change.

This reflexive gesture of self-protective, self-perpetuating patriarchy within the Catholic governing structures, in response to the valid claims of women to share in the ministerial life (and governing responsibility) of the Catholic church, locks the leadership of the Catholic church into patterns of patriarchal response typical of male hierarchical communities at their morally grossest.  To return to the evasive technique of the Vatican and bishops faced with questions about their moral and legal responsibility for priests abusing minors: one of the effects of the decision of the past two popes to hinge the future of their church on the maintenance of patriarchy as a divinely instituted ecclesial order for Catholicism is that Catholic governance structures are now ever more faithfully aping the behavior of male hierarchical institutions at their ethical worst, in secular society.

When faced with questions about the responsibility of those on top (or at the center) for those down the chain of command, leaders of rigidly structured hierarchies completely dependent on unquestioning obedience as the primary virtue of the leadership structure always, predictably shield the top or center from responsibility.  Though everyone observing the behavior of the structure under consideration, and examining how it fits together, knows that in the tightly controlled hierarchy, no decision ever takes place or can take place without the knowledge and consent of the man at the top/center.

Since total control of the top/center man is what the entire system is all about.  And total unquestioning obedience of every other link in the chain is what it’s all about as a corollary.  In an absolutist hierarchy whose central virtue is unquestioning obedience, no one in the chain of command dares to make decisions independent of the man above him.  He does not dare to give even the suggestion of asking questions or disobeying, because the reprisal is too great.  It is immediate expulsion from the hierarchical system itself.

And so here’s the situation that results from the decision of Popes John Paul II and Benedict to structure the Catholic church even more hierarchically, more patriarchally, than has been the case in the past: as the NCR editorial notes, while good, pastorally astute bishops (or priests or theologians) like Bishop Morris or Fr. Bourgeois or Sr. Elizabeth Johnson are chewed up and thrown away by the current system of Catholic governance, morally shady, ethically disreputable characters like Archbishop Chaput or Cardinals Rigali and Law thrive.  They are held up by the system as exemplars of its primary virtue: unquestioning obedience.

Cardinals Rigali and Law continue to live in “splendorous surroundings” despite their clear, undeniable protection of priests sexually abusing children, while Bishop Morris is out on his ear.  And the Catholic faithful are asked to identify Chaput, Rigali, and Law as moral heroes (they have, after all, served the church well through their unquestioning obedience), while they’re asked to view Bourgeois, Johnson, and Morris as morally questionable renegades.

Something’s wrong with this picture, with the picture the official Catholic church wants to paint for itself and adherents at this point in history—it’s morally wrong, in the view of increasing numbers of faithful Catholics.  Because we can see with our own eyes that those being chewed up and spit out by the rotten system have a moral integrity that vastly exceeds the integrity of the men being held up to us as moral exemplars.  And we find ourselves in a moral and spiritual bind, as a result.

When such harsh cognitive dissonance develops—particularly around central symbols of who or what is a moral exemplar—in an institution that claims to teach and exemplify moral values, here’s what usually happens: morally thinking, morally sensitive, upright people tend to shy away from the institution, and look elsewhere for sustenance for their moral lives.  But as they do so, true believers energized by the demand for absolute unquestioning obedience turn to the institution in question even more decisively, because it feeds their psychological need for unquestioning obedience.

The beatification of John Paul II is a rallying cry—a battle cry—of Benedict to the latter group, to carry the day for the Catholic church in the 21st century.  As Tom Fox notes in a statement today about the Bishop Morris story, Morris knew that he was to be fired the day following the beatification of John Paul II.  Pope Benedict himself told Morris this in a meeting 14 months ago (for further background information, see Anthea Gleeson’s interview with Bishiop Morris in The Chronicle [Toowoomba, Australia] and Tom Roberts and Joshua McElwee in this recent NCR article).

The date of Bishop Morris’s sacking was chosen deliberately by Pope Benedict to follow immediately on the beatification of the previous pope.  It was chosen, in other words, to be a concrete demonstration of what that beatification means for the whole church, and a signal to the true believers within the church who have called for the heads of Morris, Bourgeois, Johnson and others that they won a victory with this beatification.

And that, no matter what many Catholics or people of good will think, the leaders of the Catholic church will continue to demand that we regard Chaput, Rigali, and Law as unalloyed exemplars of the Catholic moral life in the 21st century.  Precisely as they also demand that we see Bl. John Paul II such an unalloyed exemplar.

This is a bold decision on the part of Benedict to continue at all cost hinging the future of the Catholic church on its remnant elements (and, it always has to be said when we speak of the remnant church, on the powerful economic European and American economic elites driving these Vatican decisions), on the ever diminishing cadre of true believers willing to identify unquestioning obedience as the central virtue of the Christian life.  Even if Jesus does inconveniently say that love is the primary calling of those who walk in his path of discipleship, and is the primary characteristic by which those called by his name must be known.

Australian Bishop Deposed for . . . No, Not That: He Wanted Dialogue about Women's Ordination

Bishop William M. Morris

A day to catch up on some of the significant blogs I try to follow, and then often fail to follow as faithfully as I should, when the news of the day catches my eye and saps my reading time:

There's an important story developing on the Catholic front in Australia, and Colleen Kochivar-Baker has been following it with outstanding commentary at her Enlightened Catholicism blog the past several days (here and here).  The story: immediately following the beatification of John Paul II, Pope Benedict removed from his position Australian bishop William M. Morris of Toowoomba. 

Morris's offense?  He wrote a pastoral letter five years ago stating that, as the number of priests diminishes radically in areas like the Australian outback, he'd be open to discussions about ordaining women.  Since the Catholic church faces a crisis as fewer and fewer ("celibate," male) clerical candidates come down the road, while there's a large pool of women and married men who indicate that the Spirit is calling them to priestly ministry.  For a church whose life of worship revolves around eucharistic celebration, in which the priest plays an integral role, the choice of Rome to limit ordination to celibate males has serious effects on the real lives of real parish communities around the globe, as the priestly ranks are depleted.

It seems callous, in other words, to many lay Catholics for the leaders of their church to deny them the Eucharist on which they are told their salvation depends, in order to keep the all-male, "celibate" clerical system alive.  It seems as if the whole church and its future is being sacrificed to a kind of idol that has everything to do with issues of control at the center and little or nothing to do with the gospels, in the view of many Catholics dealing with the concrete effects of the priest shortage in many parishes around the world.

As Colleen notes, though there's increasingly open discussion of this crisis in the Australian Catholic church, there's also a fierce watchdog group intent on punishing any bishop or priest who dares to speak openly about issues like women's ordination in the face of the crisis.  This group is actively promoted by the powerful (and, for many of us, odious) Cardinal Pell (on this character, see here and here).  

And America's own éminence grise Archbishop Chaput of Denver plays a role in the current Australian story, since he was, believe it or not, sent from far-away Denver to be the inquisitor visitator who compiled the report that got his fellow bishop Morris's head chopped off.  As anyone following Chaput and his activities knows well, he doesn't hesitate to involve himself in the affairs of dioceses distant from his own--and he has Roman backing as he engages in his meddling with the affairs of other dioceses. 

When Bishop William Lori decided to engage in some old-time diversionary gay-baiting in his Bridgeport, Connecticut, diocese in 2009, to divert attention from ongoing battles about his refusal to disclose information re: abuse cases in his diocesan files, there was Chaput, from half a continent away, in the thick of that battle, egging on the gay-baiting.  And when the Vatican needed an inside player to whitewash investigate the Legionaries of Christ after it became impossible for church officials to ignore the stink that Legionary founder Fr. Marcial Maciel had become, whom did church officials appoint to go around the world gathering information for that project except Chaput?

And so this is a story that has many ramifications, and which positively cries out for novelistic treatment, since it's replete with vivid characters, good guys and bad guys, villains and heroes.  And it's happening right now, in our own church, seemingly as a direct consequence of the vindication of the church of the mean machine as John Paul II is beatified, JPII who, in the opinion of many of us who were called to deeper, more vibrant faith by the reforms of Vatican II, set this mean machine with its machiavellian players into motion in our church.

Here's how Colleen frames her valuable comment on the story of Bishop Morris:  

I find it most fascinating that on the weekend dedicated to JPII, we find counter thrusts coming from people who are victims of JPII's two bigger failures.  His enabling of pedophiles, and his personal opinion about women in the priesthood which he attempted to dress up as God's will.  It just boggles my mind that in the the past month we have had one priest laicised and one bishop forced to resign over the idea of womens' ordination, while one self confessed Archbishop pedophile gets remedial treatment--treatment which not so coincidentally included his mandated removal from the jurisdiction in which he might face criminal prosecution--and one career Cardinal diplomat makes an ass of himself over the clerical pedophile JPII fawned over.  If I was keeping score it would be pedophiles 2, women's ordination -2.  But then, this is the Vatican that does classify women's ordination as a higher crime against the Church than clerical pedophilia in that one is a heresy and one is just a moral issue.

I urge readers to link to Colleen's two postings on the Australian story and to read more about it there.  Her commentary is valuable.  And to continue (and conclude with) the theme of this story as a novel in the making: I wonder, if the novel does get written, who'll be the Richelieu and who the Isaac Jogues in this story and the story of John Paul and Benedict's restorationist church in general?  

Or, perhaps more to the point, who'll be the Grand Inquisitor intent on crucifying Jesus all over again, if Jesus dares to show his hide in the church he founded?  And where will Jesus be in this story?

Hans Küng on JPII Beatification: Chronic Sickness in a Church of Sumptuous Pomposity Masking Total Emptiness

As Tom Fox notes in National Catholic Reporter, Paddy Agnew published a good overview yesterday of critical responses to the beatification of John Paul II.  Agnew is writing in the Irish Times.

Among those whose responses Agnew surveys are SNAP, Italian Vatican-watcher Giancarlo Zizola, and Swiss theologian (and peritus at Vatican II) Hans Küng.  Agnew excerpts comments Küng made about the beatification this past weekend in Frankfurter Rundschau:

In an interview last weekend with German daily the Frankfurter Rundschau , Küng says John Paul II does not merit being presented to the faithful as an example. He says: "John Paul II is universally praised as someone who fought for peace and human rights. But his preaching to the outside world was in total contrast with the way he ran the church from inside, with an authoritarian pontificate which suppressed the rights of both women and theologians."

In particular, Küng argues that John Paul’s harsh treatment of Latin American liberation theologians such as Gutierrez and Boff represented the "exact opposite" of decent Christian behaviour. Küng also sees it as totally “logical” that Pope Benedict would be keen to promote the cause of his predecessor but adds: "Wojtyla and Ratzinger are the people most responsible for the chronic sickness of today’s Catholic Church. Behind the sumptuous pomposity of the great Roman liturgy, there looms a total emptiness in many Catholic communities."

One of the most regularly touted criticisms of this beatification has been its fast-track time scale, given that it comes just six years after the death of John Paul II. Supporters of the late pope point to the fact that, to some extent, this is a beatification that has come about by popular acclamation, given the cries of "Santo subito" (Make him a saint immediately) that rang out in St Peter’s Square on the day of his funeral.

Küng dismisses this justification, arguing that the campaign was manipulated: "I remember those so-called “spontaneous” posters in St Peter’s Square – all neatly and carefully printed. The whole thing was just a con act by conservative and reactionary Catholic groups, especially those ones that are very strong in Spain, Italy and Poland."

"[H]is preaching to the outside world was in total contrast with the way he ran the church from inside": in a sacramental church, who we are and how we live proclaim our message far more decisively than our words do.  When the leaders of a church call secular society to a respect for human rights while they themselves trample on human rights in their leadership of their institution, their ultimate message to the world is, at best, opaque, unclear, ambiguous, and, at worst, the direct opposite of what their words say.  Their behavior as leaders of their own institution undercuts the message they want to proclaim to the world.

John Paul's treatment of various theologians, liberation theologians in particular, was the "exact opposite" of decent Christian behavior: silencing theologians without permitting those sisters and brothers in Christ any hearing at all, any chance to know the charges against them and the identities of their accusers, any chance to rebut the charges before they are silenced, is a violation of fundamental human rights.  The brutal suppression of liberation theology by Ratzinger and John Paul II also have had the dismal effect of silencing many of the most significant voices in Latin America challenging the oppression of the poor.  In key respects, John Paul's attack on liberation theology has aligned the Catholic church in Latin America with dictators whose behavior towards the poor in their countries is savage.

The "spontaneous" manifestation following John Paul's death calling for him to be made a saint immediately was a a "con act by conservative and reactionary Catholic groups."  It was an attempt to make the ideology of the Catholic political and religious right in Europe and the Americas appear to be the ideology of the entire church.  In beatifying John Paul, Rome sends a signal that the Catholic church has decisively aligned itself with right-wing movements, even fascist ones, and that Catholic identity at this point in history is tied up with support for movements resisting democracy and the extension of human rights around the world, including the rights of women and gay and lesbian persons.  In key respects, the beatification of John Paul II sends a signal to the world that the Vatican belongs to those wealthy and powerful corporate elites in North America who need the Catholic church to undercut movements for human rights in the developing nations, since those movements threaten the interests of the corporate elites of North America.

"Wojtyla and Ratzinger are the people most responsible for the chronic sickness of today’s Catholic Church. Behind the sumptuous pomposity of the great Roman liturgy, there looms a total emptiness in many Catholic communities."  Those who imagine that we have just seen a great victory of authentic Catholicism over jejune post-Vatican II liberal Catholicism in the beatification ceremonies are tragically deluding themselves.  Place the grand, expensive show (and who paid for that show, I wonder?) beside the real status of the Catholic church in nation after nation today, and you can only shake your head at the self-delusion of those who imagine that the spectacle, the numbers, the fanfare represent vitality for the Catholic church at this point in history.

A chronically sick church, sick unto death, mounting these spectacles to divert attention from its diagnosis: as  Colleen Baker wisely notes, "Those who wanted to believe that the beatification of JPII would put the abuse crisis and its corruption to rest . . . well, they are soooo wrong.  Justice will be served."  The beatification of the previous pope only exacerbates and deepens the crisis in which the Catholic church now finds itself, since band-aids seldom if ever cure cancer.

John Paul II Beatification Approaches: A Selection of Commentary

And from one royal spectacle to another: John Paul II will be beatified this weekend, and here's a selection of articles that, to my mind, provide valuable commentary as the beatification nears:

Maureen Fiedler, "Beatifications and Politics," National Catholic Reporter:

John Paul II actually stifled much of the optimism and hope that flowed from Vatican II. His condemnation of liberation theology disheartened the poor of Latin America. His failure to understand either feminist theology or the rising role of women in today's world contradicted many of his other commitments to human rights in the secular world. His misunderstanding of gays and lesbians was disheartening.

Jason Berry, "The Shame of John Paul II: How the Sex Abuse Scandal Stained His Papacy," The Nation:  

On John Paul’s role in the church’s long nightmare, the Rev. Richard McBrien, a distinguished University of Notre Dame theologian, wrote, “Indeed, he had a terrible record, full of denial and foot-dragging, on the greatest crisis to confront the Catholic Church since the Reformation of the 16th century.”

John Paul’s beatification may give a media boost to the Vatican, but Pope Benedict’s negligence earlier in his career has also done severe damage to the papacy; media coverage last year spotlighted how Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as Benedict was then known, failed to dismiss several known abusers. How can any pope be a voice for peace, proclaim the sanctity of life and speak for human rights while giving de facto Vatican immunity to bishops and cardinals who concealed child molesters? John Paul bequeathed a quagmire to Benedict: an archaic tradition of Vatican tribunals subservient to bishops and high church officials.

Kristine Ward, "Beatify but Verify," National Survivors Advocates Coalition News:    

The haunting question of why Pope John Paul did not lift up the innocent victims of sexual abuse by priests and nuns with the dynamism he displayed on other life issues or rid the Church of perpetrators with the vigor of annihilation that he showed toward communism should cling to St. Peter’s Basilica on Sunday like volcanic ash.

Only truth will clear the air.

Barbara Blaine, "SNAP Blasts Beatification of Pope John Paul II," Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests:

In more than 25 years as the most powerful religious figure on the planet, John Paul II did almost nothing to safeguard kids across the world. He repeatedly and effectively brought his unparalleled global influence to bear on other crucial issues but ignored or promoted stunningly complicit church officials. Church officials can’t have it both ways. They can’t claim to want victims to heal, while paying massive tribute to a man whom evidence shows turned a blind eye for decades to child sex crimes and elevated corrupt clerics like Cardinal Bernard Law.

When we honor those who enable or conceal wrong-doing, we essentially condone wrong-doing.

And so it goes, one spectacle to another, and things don't seem to change--not fundamentally--over the course of years.  Not easily.  And not frequently.  

Not even in an institution whose raison d'être is to keep the memory of Jesus alive in the world--a dangerous memory, as Johann Baptist Metz never ceases reminding us.*  Dangerous not merely for the world but also for the church, since the Jesus we remember in our eucharistic celebrations and proclamation of the gospels did not court power, wealth, and influence.

Instead, he rubbed shoulders with the wretched of the earth.  He invited himself to their tables.  He shared their meals and took upon himself their shame and exclusion from the tables of the powerful, wealthy, and influential.  And he was crucified as a result.  And his resurrection is a result of all the choices that led him to that humiliating death.  Those choices, with the solidarity with the wretched of the earth that they enact, are the precondition for the resurrection, which keeps Jesus alive beyond death, over the course of history.

I won't be watching the beatification spectacle any more than I watched the Kate and Wills show.  But as it takes place and the eyes of the world turn from the royal stage in London to the royal stage in Rome, I do wonder: will we catch any glimpse of the crucified one in this spectacle?

I tend to look for him elsewhere.

*On this theological concept, see Michael J. Iafrate's magisterial reflections at catholicanarchy.org.

Richard Sipe and Tom Rigert Call for Catholic Reformation (Starting with Benedict's Resignation)

When the situation in the Philadelphia archdiocese hit the news recently with a damning grand jury report and the indictment of the archdiocese's secretary for clergy Msgr. William Lynn, a wonderful reader of Bilgrimage, Kathy Hughes, asked if Richard Sipe had written anything about the Philadelphia situation.  I told Kathy I'd be on the lookout for Sipe's response.

And so I'm very interested to see that Richard Sipe and Joe Rigert have just now co-authored an essay for the Catholica site that doesn't specifically address the Philadelphia story, but notes that a "surge" of cases in many places indicates that the problem of sexual abuse of minors by clergy "is far more widespread than originally believed," and it reaches "right into the papacy itself."  Sipe and Rigert say flatly that Benedict has been complicit in covering up cases of clerical sexual abuse of minors.

And so what to do about this serious problem?  We cannot address it effectively, Sipe and Rigert argue, without recognizing that it's "a symptom of a systemic problem rooted in church structure and teaching."  It is, specifically, a symptom of "an outmoded, in some cases ludicrous, teaching on sex and sexuality."

 

In Sipe and Rigert's view, by adamantly closing off open discussion of various sexual issues about which lay Catholics' and many theologians' moral judgment differs from that of the hierarchy, by making the moral and teaching authority of the bishops rise and fall on their willingness to enforce hierarchical stands on these issues, and by urging bishops to challenge secular government and laws around Catholic hierarchical teaching, Catholic leadership has created a house of cards that will tumble to the ground if any aspect of this strategy is reconsidered.  Allow open discussion of sexual issues re: which a large majority of the faithful ignore magisterial teaching or encourage bishops to stop the obsessive haranguing about these issues and the attempt to coerce secular society to accept peculiar Catholic teachings re: these issues, and things will fall apart.

Because what we'll then see is the disparity between what the bishops and Vatican have been proclaiming, and how they have actually been behaving, vis-a-vis the abuse crisis.  With the diversionary sexuality debate off the table, we'll see, for instance, that as archbishop of Munich, Benedict himself permitted a priest to remain in active ministry after that priest locked an 11-year old boy into a bedroom, plied him with alcohol, and forced him to perform oral sex.

And so, though Sipe and Rigert think that open discussion about birth control, sex outside marriage, women's ordination, and obligatory celibacy for priests has long since been sorely needed if we're to get at the root causes of the abuse crisis, it's not enough.  What is needed now is a  thoroughgoing reformation of the church.  And one of the boldest and most effective steps Benedict might take if he cares about the future of the church is to begin that reformation by resigning.

Benedict should consider this epic gesture, Sipe and Rigert argue, for the following reason: 

Such leadership by example might help break the pattern and practice that holds the church hostage to a past that no longer meets the spiritual needs of the people. As presently constituted, the church structure allows male leaders—no women allowed—to maintain their power and control in an archaic monarchy; to regulate all sexual behavior, and to suppress any "sinful" deviation. A reformed church, open to the involvement of all people, would move from its obsession over sex to a healthy regard for human sexuality. 

It's the only way to deal with the sex problem of the pope and his church (boldface in original).

And so will the pope resign?  I'd be very surprised if that happened.  As far as I can see, the top leaders of the Catholic church remain intransigently committed to the bitterest rear-guard fight against any shift in moral thinking (and consequent shifts in secular law) that, in their view, challenges their teaching authority as moral arbiters.  In every area of sexual morality, but particularly in the area of gay and lesbian rights.

And that bitter intransigence, with its diversionary intent designed to deflect attention from the immoral behavior of the hierarchy in the abuse crisis, does not bode well for reformation.  It does not bode well for any systemic analysis of the real problems of the church that have led to the abuse crisis.

Just yesterday, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican representative to the U.N., reiterated the Vatican's opposition to the Declaration on Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity proposed by the U.N. office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to combat discrimination based on sexual orientation--discrimination that in some nations around the world extends to outright violence against those who are gay or lesbian.  85 nations, including the U.S., have signed on to the U.N. statement, whose final official title is "Ending Acts of Violence and Related Human Rights Violations Based On Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity."

The Vatican's reasoning, as it opposes a statement to combat discrimination and violence against gay and lesbian persons?  Tomasi's reasoning, insofar as I can make sense of it, goes something like this:

1. We Catholics deplore discrimination, of course.  We have to do so because that's what followers of Jesus do.

2. But we are opposed to statements that might give anyone a legal basis to challenge our own discrimination--statements that might form a legal basis by which someone could ask us to make our statements about opposing discrimination real in our own practice.

3. And so we are opposed to this statement.

4. And, after all, gays and lesbians don't have any real rights at all to practice being gay or lesbian--and that's what this statement envisages.  There would not be (this latter proviso is not stated, but hovers behind Tomasi's statements, and it's made explicit in the current pope's 1986 letter on the pastoral care of homosexual persons): there would not be any need for any of these statements about discrimination if those who are gay or lesbian simply kept their orientation to themselves.  It's the coming out of the closet thing that courts the violence, which is a deplorable but still understandable reaction to the insistence of gay folks on making their identities public.

Something like that.  The "reasoning" of the magisterium about human rights for gay and lesbian persons and about violence and discrimination against those who are gay and lesbian goes something like that.  Totally insincere.  Bafflingly callous.  And completely unconvincing, to anyone with a head on his or her shoulders or a modicum of moral insight.

And as the Vatican yet again refuses to sign onto an international statement deploring violence and discrimination against those who are gay or lesbian, and as Benedict himself has not uttered a single word to condemn the kill-the-gays bill in heavily Catholic Uganda, the U.S. bishops, ever doughty papal men, announce all over again that one of the most significant Catholic ministries to those who are gay and lesbian--New Ways Ministry--is not really, you know, Catholic.

Sort of like that "Catholic" hospital in Arizona which sought to save the life of a mother who, per strong medical indicators, was almost certain to die (along with her fetus) if she carried her child to term, leaving her children motherless: sort of like how that "Catholic" hospital isn't really Catholic.  And sort of like how Mercy Sister Margaret McBride, who served on the ethics committee at that "Catholic" hospital, which made the final decision to save the mother's life by aborting the fetus, deserved to be excommunicated for embodying the "Catholic" virtue of mercy in this case.

Benedict is made pope after having kept in ministry a priest who locked an 11-year old boy into a bedroom, gave him liquor, and then forced him to perform oral sex.  Sister Margaret McBride is excommunicated after having voted to save a mother's life in an excruciating moral-medical crisis in which the mother would surely have died by carrying her fetus to term.  The hospital that saved this mother's life and refused to leave her children motherless is no longer allowed to call itself Catholic.

And the Catholic church opposes discrimination against those who are gay and lesbian.  But it doesn't.  Not when opposing discrimination means that we ourselves are required to stop discriminating.  The Catholic church defends the human rights of everyone.  But it doesn't.  Not really.  It can't defend the human rights of gay and lesbian persons since those are, after all, only "alleged" rights.

Sipe and Rigert are right.  The Catholic church is direly in need of reformation right now.  If its leaders continue along the path they have committed themselves to in recent years, they will soon end up with a tiny cadre of hardcore true believers whose belief system and practice have little to do with what anyone of sound conscience can regard as morally defensible at this point in history.

And I myself think that's precisely where the current pastoral leaders of the Catholic church intend to go.  Because being little kings of a tiny nation of true believers is better, after all, than being little kings of a large, quarrelsome tribe that persistently challenges one's right to be a king at all.